Geothermal’s Top 10 Takeaways

September 06, 2017

If you don’t know anything else about geothermal heating and cooling, know this – especially if you’re thinking of upgrading your current Green Bay home’s HVAC system or at a loss for what to install in the new home you’re building:

Geothermal HVAC systems are some of the most environmentally friendly you can buy. Their relatively straightforward technology makes use of subterranean temperatures to furnish your Green Bay home with winter heat and summer cooling. Thus, your home and the earth are always in sync, fused together in a unique – and uniquely sympathetic – home-earth symbiosis. Sound a trifle too highfalutin? All it means is that, with geothermal heating and cooling, your home isn’t “messing” with the natural order of things. Instead, it’s becoming a “nicer” part of the environment.

Geothermal HVAC systems meet the criteria for “renewable energy technology.” Certainly, they run off of electricity. But they don’t use much of it for all the advantages you get. Just one unit of electricity can transfer up to five units of natural heating or cooling from the earth to your home.

Geothermal HVAC systems are far more efficient than solar (photovoltaic) or wind power technologies. Generally speaking, solar and wind technologies, whatever the allure of their “renewability,” consume four times more kilowatt-hours of electricity per dollar spent than geothermal systems.

Geothermal HVAC systems won’t take over your yard. Don’t have much yard space to begin with? No eye-opener there: most home lots in Green Bay and elsewhere anymore occupy a relatively compact the polyethylene piping required for the geothermal earth loops doesn’t have to be buried horizontally. It can be dug in vertically and run as deep as 100 to 400 feet. Hardly any above-ground surface is needed in any event, whether vertical, horizontal, open (well water), or pond loops are installed. Result? You can keep your little patch of paradise a whole lot greener.

Geothermal HVAC systems are incredibly quiet. Every aspect of a geothermal system is designed and engineered to run much quieter than traditional gas furnaces, heat pumps, or air conditioners. More impressive still, there’s no outside unit, so you and your neighbors areen’t troubled by fans, belts, and compressors whirring, whining, and juddering away at all hours!

Geothermal HVAC systems are durable heating and cooling solutions, designed to last for generations. Current geothermal technology, manufacturing guidelines, and installation procedures insure ground loops of outstanding longevity and heat-exchange equipment that will keep working impeccably for decades. It helps, naturally, that the heat-exchange equipment is housed indoors. At least, when it does ultimately have to be repaired or replaced, you undoubtedly won’t be replacing the ground, well, or pond loops along with it. So replacement costs can be relatively insubstantial.

Geothermal HVAC systems need only simple and infrequent maintenance. The earth loops, as noted, are designed to endure for generations, and when correctly buried, will do so without any need for intervention. Fans, compressors, and pumps, kept safe indoors from weather extremes, require only a sporadic check as well as periodic filter changes and a yearly coil cleaning.

Geothermal HVAC systems are as adept at cooling as they are at heating. The old notion that geothermal HVAC systems don’t cool as well as they heat has been pretty much discredited by continuing refinements in the manufacture of geothermal technology.

Geothermal HVAC systems can be adapted to multitask. Okay, so you’ve decided on heating your home’s water geothermally. But can a geothermal system provide ambient heat for your home too? And what if you have a swimming pool? Don’t worry. Today’s systems can take care of it all and take care of it concurrently, with no favoring of one task over another.

Geothermal HVAC systems are becoming increasingly affordable – even when not subsidized by federal and local tax incentives. Congress has yet to bring back federal tax credits for geothermal heating and cooling that terminated December 31, 2016. Still, a number of factors – material and technological advances, new installation practices, and increased competition in the marketplace, for the most part – are helping to bring geothermal solutions more in line with the cost of more run-of-the-mill heating and cooling methods.

Talk with the geothermal wizards at Action Heating & Cooling Services, LLC today. They’ll explain in detail the advantages of geothermal heating and cooling so you can make the right decision for your Green Bay home.